Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Thankfully, YouTube heard all our whining and complaining about that hated gray autoplay bar that was forced on us by the good folks at YouTube. It was a disaster right from the get-go, forcing you to hit the off button every time you watched the next video and was just a colossal inconvenience to the viewer. They did sorta disable it a while back making it appear in the "off" position, but I'm guessing very, very few viewers turned it back on - I know I didn't.

I think it was just the bright idea of some marketing weinie thinking "Yes! If we set it up so a new video automatically plays when the video the viewer is watching is over, that will mean an increase in views! More revenue through ads for us! Yippee!" But it didn't take into consideration the viewer's experience. By adding another unneeded and basically useless step in the viewing process, it diminished the viewer enjoyment on the website.

But major kudos to YouTube for finally taking the thing off. It didn't work and caused many people to comment on a LOT of videos that they hated it and wanted it removed asap. YouTube seems to have listened and acted in the interest of the viewers, which is what a video website has to do if the plan on growing their base.

So Billy in the marketing dept can pout about his idea flopping and we can move on. Unless the absence of the gray bar is just a temporary glitch tied in with the new dashboard for your channel. If you haven't noticed yet, the path to your channel, favorites and subscribtions has changed again, so go check that out and whine and complain about that for a while. But at least it appears the stupid gray bar is gone! YEA!

At least for now. Hopefully it's not just back in the YouTube garage being turbo boosted and going to be run out at a later date.